Madras High Court Forms Committee To Crackdown On Illegal Homestays, Cottages In Nilgiris And Kodaikanal Hills

The forest bench of Justice N Sathish Kumar and Justice Bharatha Chakravarthy asked the committee to ensure that inspection is carried out throughout the hills and to check whether the home stays and cottages were operating with a license.

“It is brought to our notice that there are large number of home stays/cottages which are functioning without even any license whatsoever from the Tourism Department or from the other agencies of the local bodies. Therefore, immediate measures are required to crack down all those illegal operators who operate without license from the Tourism Department. In this regard, an this Court is of the view that inspection shall be carried out throughout Nilgris District as well as Kodaikanal hills by a committee comprising of District Revenue Officer, Municipal Commissioner and District Tourism Officer concerned,” the court said.

The court added that wherever illegal homestays were identified, the same would be closed down by the committee. The court asked the committee to conduct a detailed inspection and file the action taken report by the next hearing.

"The committee shall ensure inspection be carried throughout the hills. This apart, the Committee shall also ascertain information through various private booking websites and ascertain whether the listed home stays, cottages are license operators or not," it added. 

The court also asked the licensed home stay operators and hoteliers to give information to the Committee regarding home stays working without a license, assuring that the names of the complainants would be kept confidential. The court also asked the Committee to make complaint mechanisms in form of dedicated mobile numbers/social media numbers through with persons can send complaints.

It may be noted that in March this year, the court had limited the number of tourist vehicles entering Nilgiris and Kodaikanal during summers. Though the hoteliers had tried to approach the Supreme Court against this restriction, the Supreme Court opined that the limit was “perfectly correct”.

Meanwhile, the Special Government Pleader informed the High Court that some special festivals like flower show, fruit show and rose show were proposed to happen on certain days in Ooty. Considering the same, the court gave discretion to the Nilgiris District Collector to increase the upper limit by 500 vehicles, depending on the needs on those days. Similarly, the court gave liberty to the Kodaikanal District Collector to increase the upper limit by 300 vehicles on the day of flower show in Kodaikanal.

Case Title: G Subramania Koushik v. The Principal Secretary

Citation: 2025 LiveLaw (Mad) 162

Case No: W.P. No. 15120 of 2019